


Confessions of a Teenaged Princess

by Gabihime



Series: First Things First [1]
Category: Sofia the First (Cartoon)
Genre: Breaking and Entering, Confession, F/M, First Kiss, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-19
Updated: 2015-01-19
Packaged: 2018-03-08 05:04:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3196358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabihime/pseuds/Gabihime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sofia attempts to confess her feelings to Cedric with very mixed results. Fortunately, she's not known for giving up easily, even if she has to resort to breaking and entering. Cedfia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Their first kiss lasted twelve seconds.

This is rather long for a first kiss, because twelve seconds is actually quite a considerable amount of time if one counts it out. The length of the kiss alone might have suggested a positive reception, especially considering the fingertips that brushed inadvertently at the warm silk near the base of a certain princess's spine.

However -

They were in the tower workshop, which she had invaded, as had become quite customary. Sofia clearly hadn't had any particular agenda when she had come knocking. These days it was not always perils and troubles that sent her to the sorcerer's tower, looking for a helping hand, a willing listener, or a serviceable wand arm. In fact, the girl had become so comfortable in the tower that she had left off knocking at all for a while, and had simply let herself in unannounced on more than one occasion. After she had surprised him while he was either dressing or undressing three separate times he had  _demanded_ that princess or not, she had the decency to  _knock_ before barging into his rooms.

Now she always knocked, although really, it was just a formality. He always let her in.

It wasn't as if he were (obviously) overjoyed to see her whenever he opened the door to her familiar knock. Sometimes he met her with a half-lidded stare and a voluminous shrug, or he waved her in distractedly, his attention focused on something else. Other times he was impatient as he nearly yanked her inside, his excitement burning up as he animately explained a spell he had just completed, or some other unusual thing he had recently discovered. He often found himself starved for conversation when she appeared, as his only other companion was Wormwood, and while the bird was a good listener, he was not particularly talkative.

Generally, Cedric found talking with the denizens of Enchancia castle to be tedious and a dreadful waste of his valuable time. It was the absolute opposite of pleasurable. As royal sorcerer he was required to attend the king, and so he did, but  _attending_ the king did not mean he had to  _enjoy spending time_  with the king. He had far more important things to do with himself. Things had gotten better on that score over the years, as a helpful sprite had worked her unfathomable magic of goodwill, but it wasn't as if he ever  _looked forward_  to a day with Roland II, or the 'responsibility' of entertaining Prince James or Princess Amber.

Of course, in the beginning, he had similarly dreaded talking with Sofia. She was so bright and cheerful, with a basket full of charity, a heart bursting with kindness and goodwill, and a voice like a little songbird: and therefore, she was the most excruciating trial of his life. At school he would have never imagined that any single person might ever surpass Greylock the Galling in terms of sheer annoyance, but Sofia was far more determined, far more intelligent, and far more underfoot than Greylock had ever been.

And she didn't take hints well at all. No matter how unwelcome he made her feel in those early days, she had always been there to tug at his sleeve when she got herself into trouble (or, embarrassingly, when she got him  _out_ of trouble. It did not do much for one's dignity to be continually rescued by a nine year old.)

But then, that was the reason she was welcome in the tower now. She was intelligent enough to be worth talking to, she was determined enough to have not given up trying to befriend him, and she had been under his feet for so many years that he was simply accustomed to her. For years he had pushed her away only to find her immediately right back in the spot from which she had been so recently removed. She was like a cat who always finds its way into a forbidden space, no matter the obstacles or consequences. If she found a closed door, she opened it, even without permission. She was always there to help him before he even thought of asking. She smiled and it had a genuine warmth to it. When she laughed he did not find it grating, most particularly because she never laughed _at him_. She always had interesting things to say, and beyond that she was always willing to listen to what  _he_ had to say, to give him her honest opinions, to encourage him when he had a difficult time with things, and to congratulate him when he succeeded.

And she brought him sandwiches.

It wasn't always sandwiches. Sometimes it was a bowl of wiggly pudding, or some slices of apple pie. Sometimes it was a book from the library. Occasionally it was her homework, but she never came empty-handed.

And once she came through the door of the workshop, she was sure to stay for hours, as if she had come through a magic gate into her own private kingdom. Sometimes she stayed so long that she fell asleep in the chair, or on the rug. It was as if she really could think of nothing better to do with her time than to spend it with him. More than once in the early hours of the morning he had looked up from a book and realized with a start that she was still sound asleep on the rug with his robe thrown over her. In those cases he had to fetch the royal guard at once to remove her to her own rooms. He did not dare touch her himself, although he commonly touched her in other situations, and had touched her for years, she was such a regular fixture of his life. He had pulled her out of harm's way half a hundred times, and she really always seemed to be hanging on his arm for some reason or another.

But realizing she was asleep on the floor at two in the morning always caused him to break out into a cold sweat, although he was not altogether sure why. Surely it was not because he was  _afraid_ of the sleeping Sofia, whose rosy bare feet sometimes peeked out from under the bottom of her skirts when she was curled up on the rug.

That was absurd.

It was really so absurd that he had stopped moving away from her so quickly when she inevitably stepped close to him in the sometimes cramped confines of the tower. There was no reason to retreat from her. It wasn't as if she was an advancing army. She was just one girl with slender arms and round shoulders and hands like small, live birds. Her warmth moved with her, and sometimes when her hand was on his arm he had a curious desire for her to leave it there.

She was comforting and comfortable, and he honestly enjoyed spending time with her.

And somehow she was also incredibly alarming. He could not say why or how. It was an instinctual fear response that made him want to press himself so hard against the wall that he sank into it, retreating into the old stone. There was something about her that he did not quite have the shape of, and it was terrifying.

And yet he knew It was ridiculous to be afraid of a sixteen year old princess who carried on long conversations with her pet rabbit, although he was well aware of exactly how formidable that princess could be as an adversary. In her years as Second Princess of Enchancia she had saved the kingdom dozens of times and defeated scads of ne'er-do-wells (some of them repeatedly). He considered it generally fortunate on all counts that Sofia had made an ally of him despite his best efforts to dissuade her. While she had the Amulet of Avalor he could be certain of where it was and how it was being used. She really was the perfect safe-deposit box.

He hadn't given up on acquiring the amulet  _entirely_ , but years of disappointments on that score had made him somewhat less keen to acquire it. Barring divine intervention, the amulet seemed destined to stay on a certain slender royal neck, unless she up and decided to give it to him one day.

\- which was always  _possible_ , if unlikely. She was extremely generous, but she wasn't stupid.

While a stupid princess would have likely been easier to deal with, at this point Cedric was strangely glad it had been the troublesome redhead who had become Enchancia's unexpected Second Princess. Although a never-ending source of trouble in his life, she had also become a bewildering source of satisfaction and happiness.

After all, he had no illusions that his family's wand, which was carefully laid away in a painstakingly decorated handmade wandbox until he had need of it, would have ever come into his hands without the direct intervention of the buttercup princess. He simply could not reason with his father, but Sofia seemed to have this miraculous power. She had saved his job and his life countless times, and whenever he wondered why, she was always quick to answer, "Well, of course, Mr. Cedric. We're friends. That's just something that friends do."

Of course, he had very little experience with friends, so it was difficult for him to disagree with her assessment, being that it was not his area of expertise, but as far as he could tell most people who referred to themselves as friends had not shared quite so many harrowing experiences with one another. He did not really doubt that she was his friend, and by virtue of the fact that he really had no others she was certainly his best friend, but he was not always sure that this was all there was to it. She spent more time with him than with anyone else. Anybody who did a simple accounting of time could figure that much out. Surely a girl like Sofia had dozens and dozens of friends, plenty of people both excited and willing to devote their afternoons and evenings to her.

And yet it was always to the workshop that she came, with a plate of sandwiches, a stack of books, or sometimes a new pair of socks.

And he was glad to let her in.

This particular evening she was sitting on a stool, her chin propped on her hands, as she watched him at his work table, fussing with beakers and distillation equipment. He was fiddling with a potion he had recently discovered in a dusty alchemy book in the palace library. The name of the formula was  _Abscondit Corculilum_ , and it was giving him no end of trouble.

"If I have understood the notes correctly, it is a concoction to make invisible things visible," Cedric explained to Sofia, who was listening intently. "Which is very convenient if think about it. It's very annoying to have someone sneaking about when you can't see them, and just imagine if you accidentally misplace something important with an invisibility spell. This will reveal it!"

"That does sound awfully useful," Sofia agreed.

Cedric held the vial of teal liquid above his head and let out a great moan, "But it doesn't seem to work no matter what I do," he lamented. "I don't know if I've mixed it wrong or what. The instructions are a bit strange. But watch this, " he said, and pointed at an apparently blank spot on the table, "There's an apple up there that I've already turned invisible with a spell." He carefully let half a dozen drops of the concoction fall on the invisible apple. Sofia saw them strike it, and run down the sides ineffectually, as the potion was visible, even if the apple was not. The potion had not really had its intended effect, she thought. "See?" he grumbled. "Absolutely nothing but a mess."

At this, Sofia got up from her chair and moved around to the alchemy book that lay open on the table.

"Well, let's look at it together," she suggested. "Maybe we can figure out what went wrong."

That wasn't a terrible idea. Sofia was uncommonly clever with both potions and spells, and she often had something helpful to had. Beyond that, she was difficult to discourage. Around the time he was ready to give up, she was just getting started, and obligingly grabbed his hand and pulled him along behind her.

She was already bent over the alchemy book, letting one finger slowly run across the page as she thought about things. He came up behind her and leaned over the book himself.

"This word," she said after a minute, letting her finger rest over a particularly abstruse word in the description of the spell. "What does it mean, exactly?"

Cedric leaned forward to look at it closely and then shrugged. "It means invisible," he answered shortly.

Sofia bit her lip and tilted her head to the side. "Is that all it means?" she asked. "I feel like it's not. Maybe the reason the potion isn't working isn't because you made a mistake and mixed it wrong, but because we don't really understand what it does."

Cedric eyed her dubiously, "I'm not certain of that, Princess. The potion's effect seems straightforward. It makes invisible things visible. There isn't much room for nuance in that."

"Well," said Sofia, shrugging her own shoulders, "Maybe there is. We won't know until we look."

She left him at the table and moved to the shelf where she found a huge dictionary of arcane terms. She staggered a little as she dragged it off the shelf and Cedric had to scramble to assist her before she and the book ended up on the ground. They got the book over to the work table with a little difficulty and soon Sofia was rapidly flipping through the closely written pages.

"Oh look, here it is!" she cried in triumph, letting her finger come to rest on the page. "It says 'something hidden, something ever-present, but kept from view.' That doesn't really sound like something invisible. Maybe like something obscured, but not really invisible. You know when you're underneath some kinds of light, your shadow disappears? It's not really invisible, even though you can't see it. Maybe it's something like that."

Cedric, who had crowded behind her at the book to read the definition of the word that she'd found, was suddenly struck by her idea.

"You know, Princess Sofia, I think you may be right," he said with building excitement. "I hadn't really considered it, but it's possible that this potion does something far more interesting than just reveal run-of-the-mill invisible things. There are other potions for that, after all."

He was leaning over the book again, bracing himself against the table. Sofia was at his elbow, as she ever was, and so quite accidentally one of his arms found its way around her shoulders. He felt her warmth as she moved against him, leaning forward herself, trying to puzzle out the meaning of the words on the page.

"This part," she said with enthusiasm, having put her hands on another mystery, "I think this part might mean 'sense.'"

"Perhaps it's a potion to reveal hidden senses!" Cedric cried in triumph, giving her shoulders a squeeze.

"It could be!" Sofia agreed, turning slightly to tug on the front of his robe. "If it is, then that sounds really amazing. Maybe we'll be able to taste colors, or see music. That would be incredible."

"It would be," Cedric agreed, smiling wistfully, "Thank you, princess." Her enthusiasm was infectious, and he had caught it.

And that's when the twelve seconds began.

The girl already had ahold of the front of his robe, and so she had simply pulled on him gently and risen on her toes -

And she had kissed him.

The brush of her lips was as soft as the silk-velvet feeling of orchid petals against his fingertips, but then it was not so much like holding a flower, but like feeling a crystal decanter shatter into thousands of fragments on the stone floor,  _because she had the advantage of him_. She had caught him with his mouth open slightly and had pressed her luck. Her tongue was warm and curious, gentle but insistent, and the moment it had slipped into his mouth to brush against his own tongue he had lost track of absolutely everything else.

This is how fourteen seconds passed in an exquisitely confused kiss. It was not a magnificently perfect kiss, not the sort that happened right before the curtain fell, to the rise of exultant music. It was a little silly and a little messy, but very involved and deliberate, particularly on the part of the Second Princess.

Cedric, at last finding his feet after extreme euphoria, was beginning to feel very good about absolutely everything in the world, one of his hands coming to settle against the small of her back as she smiled up at him, her face flushed and rosy.

But then there was raucous cawing from a corner of the workshop as Wormwood beat against the bars of his cage and in one moment of pure, horrified realization, did Cedric understand what he had done.

He shrieked like he had see a spider the size of a cat crawling up the wall and shoved Sofia as far away from him as he could, backpedaling rapidly.

"I kissed you!" he yelped in horror.

Sofia shook her head as she took a hesitant step toward him again.

"Actually," she said, "I kissed you."

"Do you think that's going to matter to anyone who finds out about this?" Cedric asked, his hysteria building as he again retreated from her advance, knocking over a stack of spellbooks as he did. "I'm the court sorcerer. I can't go around kissing teenaged princesses! King Roland will have me thrown in the deepest well he can find!"

"You didn't like it?" Sofia asked anxiously, biting her lip even as she continued to slowly advance.

"I don't like being banished from the kingdom!" Cedric asserted with a howl of distress. "And I've worked  _so_ hard for  _so_ long. I'm going to be thrown out, and then I'll be the laughing stock of the magic academy: a court sorcerer with no court." Suddenly his hands flew to his throat. "What if the king isn't lenient? What if he decides to behead me?! Oh Cedric," he moaned, "You died so young, so full of promise."

"Mr. Cedric, no one's going to behead you," Sofia insisted, "I don't think anybody's ever been beheaded in the history of Enchancia, and you haven't even done anything. I told you," she said, " _I_  kissed  _you_. I didn't just kiss you just because I felt like it, although I did feel like it. I kissed you for a reason. It just seemed like the right time. I've been waiting to do it for a while, because there's something I want to tell you."

Cedric let out another yelp of distress as Sofia again approached him and he scuttled up on the worktable, this time knocking a bottle of violently green fluid on the floor as he attempted to put distance between himself and the slowly advancing princess.

"Don't say it, don't say it, don't say it," insisted Cedric, his voice shrill. "Whatever it is you're going to say, don't say it. I don't want to know. I'm more than twenty years older than you are, princess,  _please be reasonable_."

"That doesn't matter to me, Mr. Cedric," Sofia said resolutely. "After all, 'Age is just a number,' right? That's what I think, anyway."

"Age may just be a number, Princess Sofia," Cedric began in panicked despair, "But in my case it is  _a very large number_ , much larger than  _your_ number, do you understand me? This is a thing that  _concerns_ people, particularly parents. Most particularly royal parents. No one's going to believe that you kissed me, and it doesn't matter anyway. I'll still be excommunicated from the country, the place where my family has lived and served for generations. In the best case scenario I'll be disgraced. In the worst, I'll be burned at the stake for being a philandering cad of a sorcerer who sullied your virtue."

He was on the edge of a loud, prolonged crying jag.

Meanwhile, the green liquid had turned out to be extremely corrosive and was rapidly eating a sizeable hole in the stone floor. While Cedric curled up on the work table sobbing, Sofia rapidly sorted through the other potions on the desk until she found one to neutralize the acid in the smoking hole.

"Mr. Cedric," she said nervously, wringing her hands even as she knelt to pour chemicals into the fizzing void, "I understand that you're upset, and I didn't mean to make you cry. I just want to tell you that I - "

And this at last spurred Cedric to action as if someone had set his robe on fire. He leaped off the work table and grabbed Sofia by the shoulders, causing her to drop the beakers she had been holding into the yawning hole, where they shattered as they struck stone.

"That's it!" he declared, "Get out!  _Get out get out get out!"_

And with no further ceremony or explanation, he shoved her right out the door and locked and barred it behind her, before sliding down it weakly and collapsing into a boneless lump against against the floor, where he lay prone and terrified.


	2. Chapter 2

Even her very best, most sincere pleading had not induced Cedric to open the door. This was something of an accomplishment on his part, as he was usually not very successful at denying her much of anything, and her pleading had softened hearts quite a bit stonier than his. But she had put fear into him - although this certainly had not been her intention - and now he was absolutely unwilling to have her near him.

Eventually she gave up trying to get him to open the hallway door and just went around the long way to the door in the castle gardens. Unfortunately, Cedric was relatively experienced with Sofia's modus operandi, and as soon as he had recovered enough to stand on his own feet he had rushed down the stairs to lock and bar the garden door as well.

This left his tower virtually inaccessible.

Sofia realized that she was going to have to order a tactical retreat, and she did, retiring to an isolated corner of the garden. She met Clover there, who left off digging up radishes when he saw out upset she was. She sat down in a grassy patch of flowers and leaned up against the wall, pensive. Things had not gone the way she had hoped they would.

Sofia looked a little worse for wear, as she had recently worked up all her courage for a potent first kiss, neutralized a major acidic spill while trying to talk about her feelings, and been shoved out a door for her trouble.

"What's up, Sof?" the rabbit asked, coming to sit in the flower patch with her. "It looks like you just found out that they cancelled dessert for the rest of the year."

"Worse than that," Sofia said with a sigh, blowing air out of the side of her mouth at the disheveled bangs that hung in her face. Her tiara was on crooked. Cedric had knocked it all funny when he had shoved her away from him like she was the carrier of a virulent disease. She had not yet had the heart to fix it. "I kissed Mr. Cedric," she explained, troubled.

"He was already a frog," Clover joked. "Did he turn into a prince?" the rabbit wanted to know, kicking back in the grass for some quality time with his princess.

"No," Sofia said honestly. "He screamed."

"He screamed?!" Clover wondered aloud, his brows drawing together. Then all at once he got a look on his face like he'd just been caught in carriage lights. "Oh Sof, you don't mean you  _actually_ kissed him, do you? Like  _kissed him_ , kissed him? Like waking someone up who's pricked their finger on a spinning wheel kissed him? We're talking about poison apple recovery type kissing?"

Sofia nodded weakly, "Yep," she admitted. "That would be exactly the kind of kissing I'm talking about."

"I bet you didn't break the curse of his terrible personality," Clover quipped, then he paused and thought about it. "Let me get this straight," he said. "You, Sofia, best princess in the entire world, kissed Cedric the Suspect  _and_   _he's the one who_   _screamed_?" Clover asked dubiously. "Was it maybe a happy scream? You know, like a scream of delight? Like 'ARGH! This is the best day of my life!'"

Sofia winced and shook her head. "I don't think it was a scream of delight. I think it was a regular, normal, awful scream. Like how you'd scream if you saw Amber coming to dress you up for a fashion show."

"That's definitely a scream of terror," Clover agreed.

Sofia nodded. "And after he screamed, he got really upset," she looked at Clover sidelong, "I mean  _really_  upset. I didn't have time to say much of anything to him." She fidgeted guiltily. "He seems to think that he's going to be thrown out of the kingdom because of me."

"Well," Clover noted practically, "I bet if you complained to your royal dad you could get him thrown out, and I mean  _chop chop._  You're basically the whole Cedric cheering section in this kingdom, and he's almost been fired, what,  _seven hundred times?_ "

This made Sofia turn slightly ashen. "I don't want to get him fired!" she insisted.

"Even after he screamed when you kissed him?" Clover demanded sardonically. "You sure are forgiving. If someone screamed after Amber kissed them, I'm pretty sure that girl would declare war - not just figurative war, but like  _real, actual_ war with cannons and stuff."

"I just wanted to tell him how I really felt," Sofia said sadly, wrapping her arms around her knees. "He's under no obligation to  _like_ what I tell him. I love him, but I don't want to  _make_ him like me, although I really wish he did," she smiled wistfully, then ducked her head down into her knees. "I always thought it was best to tell other people how you felt about them, but now I don't know. It seems like I've messed absolutely everything up. He won't talk to me at all. I'm not sure what to do. It was really, really hard working up the courage to do that in the first place, and all it did was make a big mess of everything. Maybe I did something wrong," she worried, "Maybe I did something he didn't like. It's the first time I'd ever done something like that." Her cheeks were flushed and she felt very hot and confused.

"You obviously did something he didn't like, otherwise he wouldn't have screamed," Clover pointed out, and Sofia's lower lip pushed out threateningly in response. Clover waved her off with his paws. "I'm just going to throw this out there, Sofia, but I don't think your boyfriend would have the first clue about whether you're up to the gold standard in kissing or not. I don't think the guy has all that much experience with girls," he shrugged expressively. "Remember when he got all goopy and weird over Sasha the Sorceress, who was just Miss Nettle in disguise?" The rabbit made a number of expressive and colorful hand motions to illustrate this part of the story. "The first time, okay, but  _the second time,_  you remember, when she came back as 'Eileen the Enchantress' and was just wearing different lipstick _?_  It's like that guy's got the memory of a tomato - one that's already squishy and starting to go bad." Clover threw his paws up. "You know what that says to me, Sof? It says that that dope is practically wearing a medal around his neck embossed with the words 'the only girl who ever kisses me is my mother.' I'll be honest with you. I think I have more experience with ladies than he does, and I'm a bunny rabbit."

Sofia sighed again and curled up into a smaller ball. She felt terrible about everything. She had begun to feel sick to her stomach.

Clover could sense her distress, but couldn't think of any way to comfort her, so instead he kicked at the grass.

"Why'd you have to fall in love with that idiot anyway?" Clover complained to a clump of daffodils. "Why couldn't you have fallen in love with a different idiot, like Prince Desmond, or Prince Hugo, or I dunno, even Baileywick would be better than Mr. Wishes-He-Was-Sinister. Baileywick's not even an idiot, so that's in his favor, and he knows just how you like your pancakes. There's still time," Clover said, slapping one paw into the other for emphasis, "Forget Mr. Gloomydoom and hurry up and fall in love with Baileywick. We'll send him a box of chocolates. He's like, fifty times nicer than the sorcerer, even if he  _is_ old enough to be your grandpa."

"It doesn't work that way," she grumped, dangerously close to pouting. "I didn't just go down a list checking off boxes to find my perfect match," Sofia answered indignantly, huffing into her knees. "I love Mr. Cedric because I love Mr. Cedric. It's  _always_ been Mr. Cedric. You know that. I can't just turn it off and on. My heart doesn't have a lightswitch."

Clover sighed dramatically. "I know," he said, hopping over to rub her arm comfortingly. "I dunno what to tell you, kiddo," he said with the sort of shrug that only a bunny can make. "I guess we'll just have to see how things turn out."

* * *

If Sofia hoped that sleeping on her troubles would ease them, then she was disappointed. A good night's sleep did nothing to sweeten Cedric's temper nor convince him that her offer (whatever it might have been) was worth listening to. The world was still very much all out of sorts. When she went to his tower the next morning after breakfast but before school, she found the doors still shut up tightly. When she asked a guard about it, she discovered that Cedric had called in sick for the day.

"He says he's got a really contagious strain of the flu," said Rudolpho, the guard most commonly stationed near the tower. "Best keep your distance for a while, miss."

Sofia was very preoccupied during the whole of the school day. Her worries were mixed up and confused. Part of her was worried about the fact that he had withdrawn from the castle, and was avoiding everyone, likely because of the previous day's kiss. The other part of her worried that he was actually ill, and that he had no one to look after him since he had barred and locked the door. Her distraction caused her to turn an anvil into a teakettle instead of a pocket watch in magic class, to step on Desmond's feet repeatedly in dance class, and to completely miss a wing blast during riding practice, knocking a riding dummy into a tree.

Such poor performance was very unusual for Sofia and her teachers noticed her wavering attention. Mistress Flora even worried that Sofia might have a low-grade fever, and prescribed a lot of bedrest for the princess when she got home.

After school the door to Cedric's rooms was barred just as it had been in the morning, and Rudolpho could give her no updates, other than the assurance that Cedric had accepted a tray of food from Violet in the middle of the day. Otherwise he had not left the tower.

The next morning, Cedric claimed to have Cholera, and the day after that, Diphtheria. If things continued, soon he would have either polio or the measles.

He still refused to speak much when she knocked at the door, even when she tried to persuade him to come out of the tower for his own health, promising to leave him be.

"After all, Mr. Cedric, you can't just stay in there forever," Sofia pleaded. "You've got to come out some time."

"Cedric isn't here," he'd said in response. "I'm afraid he has just died. I'll send his family your condolences. Don't send flowers and please _do not_ call again."

Sofia sighed, and biting her lip, reluctantly left the hall.

* * *

Feeling very low, Sofia at last settled down on a pile of straw out behind the royal stables. Nothing she had tried had worked, and now she worried that he really would make himself ill avoiding her. She  _had_ messed everything up, and now he wasn't even willing to be her friend, and on top of all that she hadn't even gotten to say what she really felt. Everything was awful, and she felt like having a long cry about it. She sniffled, rubbing her nose against her sleeve and looked at the dirt on her hands. Then she outright groaned and proceeded to roll over and over in the straw several times, trying to work the absolute despair out of her body.

She was just about begin crying in earnest when she felt a warmth at her breastbone and looked down in surprise to realize that the Amulet of Avalor was filled with radiance.

A princess?

Well, that followed.

Sofia couldn't see any way out of what had happened without either a princess or a miracle.

She sat up and tried her best to look dignified and ready to receive a royal princess.

There was a lot of straw sticking weirdly out of her hair and her tiara. Well, there was nothing to do about that. The princess who came would see her as she was: grimy, sobbing, and covered with little bits of chaff.

As the summoning spell glimmered away, a princess was left standing on the mucky ground behind the stable.

This princess immediately put her hands on her hips and asked, "Now my wee lassie, why are you crying?"

Sofia sniffled as she looked up. "Meridah," she managed, before having to rub her nose again on her sleeve.

"Aye it is," said the girl whose maple red hair was wild even in the light breeze. She took in the state of Sofia and tilted her head slightly to the side, looking sympathetic. "You look like you've had a hard time of it," she said.

Sofia bit her lip then ducked her head. "I did something I shouldn't have," she admitted, her cheeks flushing. "Or, I don't know. It seemed right at the time, but now everything's awful and messed up and I don't know what to do." She took a deep breath but despite how she tried to calm herself, it still came out as a half sob.

"It's all right, wee bairn," comforted Meridah, coming to sit beside Sofia on the musty straw. "A little at a time will do well enough. We'll get to the bottom of it."

"I did something," she began again, and then trembled for several seconds before she could continue. "I did something and I didn't get a chance to explain what it meant, or even apologize about it, and now I can't talk to the person I want to explain it to, and I don't know if I even should, because what if explaining things makes everything worse - " she had gotten herself going on a tear, her voice rising in volume and pitch until Meridah patted her head soothingly.

"Hushabye my darling," she said gently, and Sofia quieted a little. Meridah thought about things. "Now when you say you can't talk to this person you want to explain things to, have they gone beyond where you can reach them?" she asked softly.

"What do you mean?" asked Sofia.

"Have they died, my love?" Meridah's voice was very quiet as she asked this delicate question, ready to console the mud-streaked princess if necessary. Fortunately, Sofia let out a sigh of relief as she shook her head.

"Oh no," she said, "He's just shut the door and locked it."

Meridah let out a sigh of her own and then slapped Sofia on the shoulder. "Well then, that's easy," she declared.

"How is that easy?" Sofia asked in consternation, her mouth puckering up in distress.

"There are lots of ways to get through a door," Meridah confided, "Even a locked door. Does it have a key you can get?" she asked.

Sofia shook her head. "No, I think Mr. Cedric has the only one to the tower. Not even housekeeping has one," she flushed a little and looked down when Meridah raised an eyebrow. "I've had similar problems in the past," she admitted.

"Which is why there's no easy way in now," Meridah said with a nod, and then shrugged philosophically. "Well, that's no great loss. A key is the neatest way through a door, but it's not the only way in. Can you blow it open?" she wondered.

"Maybe?" Sofia asked in amazement, having astonished herself with this answer. "I mean, probably, with magic, but I'd really like to  _not_  blow up the door, if possible. That'd be even more explaining to do," she said, attempting to reason with the summoned princess, who was obviously very interested in the possibility of pyrotechnics.

Meridah looked decidedly disappointed at this veto, as if she had pinned her hopes on Sofia being interested in castle demolition.

"Well, surely there's got to be another way into those rooms," she said. "It's got a door. Does the place nae have windows?"

"Well," Sofia said slowly, "There is a window way up the tower - "

"That's it then," Meridah said, slapping her fist into her palm. "Just climb up and go through the window."

"The window's in a tower," Sofia reminded the enthusiastic princess, "It's about five stories up, I think. I'm pretty athletic, but I can't scale a bare rock wall."

"You should try it some time," suggested Meridah, giving her another slap on the arm. "It'll curl your hair. There's nothing quite like it. Gives you a real thrill, and the taste of raw freedom on your tongue."

Sofia smiled weakly at the thought then bit her lip again. "You know," she said, "Even if I can't  _climb_  in the window, I think there is a way for me to get in that way." She looked over at Meridah with troubled eyes. "But even if I can get in to talk to him, I don't know if I should. What if talking just makes things worse?"

"You want to explain things, don't you?" demanded Meridah. "You want to put things right between the two of you, don't you lassie? Talking things over can be hard. It can seem impossible, like there's no way to get the words out, or no reason to try," here Meridah paused to look at her own fingers, and Sofia could see the calloused forefinger, toughed from stringing a bow, and perhaps also from needlework. "But no matter how hard it is to talk things through, you've got to do it. Gather up all the threads of your guts, my girl. That's courage. There's no way another person can understand you if you don't work at it, and there's no way that you can understand that other person unless you listen to what they have to say. If you really talk to one another, if you really listen, then it'll never get worse. It'll only get better. Sometimes the way to get past a rough patch is just to go right through it. It may seem rocky. It may seem awful, and hard, and scary, much worse than the safe place you came from, but if you hold tight, you'll see yourself through. A princess needs a strong spirit and a brave heart," Meridah said, and the power seemed to come from deep in her chest, "But she also needs wisdom, faith, and compassion. If you remember all that when you're doing the talking, then everything'll turn out all right."

She got to her feet, but a little of the old straw stuck to her dress.

"But if I may make a suggestion," she said with a chortle, "Ye might want to wash your face before you go."

And as Sofia's hands darted up to her face, to pat at the dirt on her cheeks, Meridah was gone in a twinkling of magic.


	3. Chapter 3

"I feel good about this," Sofia said, giving herself a light slap on her cheeks to steel her nerve. "I feel good about  _things_. I can do this."

"I'm glad you feel good about this," Minimus said nervously, "Because I don't. Are you sure you want to do this? Because this seems  _really_ dangerous," he pleaded, shifting his back hooves uneasily.

"What, you mean jump off your back five stories up and hope I make it through an average-sized window?" Sofia asked with an oddly high laugh, "Oh no, I'm sure it's completely safe. I've done stuff lots more dangerous than this in derby races," she attempted to assure him, and to convince herself in the process. She swallowed hard. "Anyway, you're not going to talk me out of it, Minimus. If he won't open the door, then I've got to find another way in. I'm not giving up. The only other option is blowing the door open, and I really,  _really_ want to avoid having to do that," she said.

"Well, I still think it's crazy," said Minimus, snorting and shaking his head.

"It is," Sofia agreed, patting him on the neck, "But crazy's the only thing I've got right now. We've got to hope that crazy works."

"All right Sofia," Minimus reluctantly agreed, "If you know what you're doing."

"I do," she insisted, then smiled as she tightened the buckle to her hardhat, "I mean, as much as I ever know what I'm doing," she said with a laugh. Then she dug in with her knees and took a deep breath before letting it out.

"Okay," she said, her game face ready, "Let's do this."

Given her somewhat lackluster performance during the early part of the week, it had not been difficult for Sofia to convince Sir Gillium to let her take Minimus home with her for the weekend, for some extra practice. She was grateful for this, since her plan to infiltrate Cedric's tower hinged on the horse's cooperation. It wasn't even a fib, really, since she assured Minimus that they would practice dutifully once she got her issues with the sorcerer sorted.

The small Pegasus hadn't been overjoyed when he heard in detail what she intended to do, but he also knew that he wouldn't be able to dissuade her. She was committed and determined. When once faced a committed and determined Sofia, the only thing to do was to go along with her plan and hope it turned out well, or get out of her way.

And so Sofia told the guards stationed around the palace grounds that she intended to spend a couple of hours practicing some new maneuvers with Minimus, and that they oughtn't worry if they saw her flying erratically. She'd call if she needed them. She'd reconnoitered the tower a little earlier in the afternoon and had discovered that, as usual, the upper window was open, although all of the lower windows were shuttered. If Cedric expected an invasion, he certainly did not reckon on one from the air.

Everything had lined up as she hoped it would. Now there was only one last wish on a daylight star for luck and then to trust in her own skill.

Minimus was up in the air at her urging, and then they did one quick pass by the tower, to gauge distance. Sofia wouldn't allow more than one pass, lest Cedric notice there was a princess buzzing around his tower and lock the window up tight. The second pass came, and Minimus cut the distance between himself and the tower very close, doing a half roll as he passed near the window.

"Now, Sofia!" he yelled, and she jumped.

There was one, long moment of silence as Sofia hung in the air, and she could feel the blood beating in her ears, but then she was tumbling through the window, knocking over a houseplant in a terracotta pot as she spilled over an end table. She wrapped her body around it instinctively, so it wouldn't shatter, and as she came to a confused stop she realized she was sitting on the back of a wing chair that she had tipped over during her unorthodox entrance. Outside the window she could see Minimus wheeling to come by for a third pass, to make sure she was all right, and so she stuck her head out and called, "All clear! Go have Clover get you some carrots. I'll be down to rub you off later!"

Then she set about replacing the potted plant she had knocked over and righting the chair. Of course, she'd made no small amount of noise when she'd come crashing into Cedric's bedroom as Hurricane Sofia, and the sorcerer was soon at the stairway door to see what on earth had caused all the commotion.

He found Sofia neatly rearranging his furniture. He stared at her blankly for a solid minute, and then he remembered to close his mouth.

"Princess Sofia?" he asked in astonishment, "How did you get in here?"

"Through the window," Sofia answered matter-of-factly, turning the plant so it got the best exposure. So far, things weren't going too badly. They were having a normal conversation, and he was not yet shrieking or in tears thanks to her presence.

"Through the window?" he asked in confusion, and then stared at the offending window hard, as if it might have something to add to the conversation. Then, as if to reassure himself that the window was in fact still five stories above the garden, he went and looked out it himself, took careful note of the distance to the ground, and then turned his attention back to Sofia. "And how exactly did you do that?" he demanded.

"I jumped," she said, folding her hands in front of her, "From the back of my flying horse, Minimus."

"What?" asked Cedric and it looked very much as if he needed to sit down. "You jumped through the window from the back of a flying horse?" he asked, brushing his fingertips against his forehead.

"Yes," Sofia answered again patiently, feeling under her chin to unfastened her hardhat.

As if the full import of what she had told him had at last sunken into his brain, Cedric put both of his hands on her shoulders and said, "But that's absolutely insane! You could have been killed!"

"I could have been," Sofia admitted mildly, "If I had missed. But I made it fine."

At her neck, the Amulet of Avalor caught the light most beautifully. Cedric's eyes were drawn to it briefly, but then his brows drew together again as he turned his attention back to the worrisome princess.

"Why in heaven would you do something like that?" Cedric asked, half angry, but still ashen at the thought of what might have happened if Sofia had not successfully made the jump.

Sofia closed her eyes briefly and relaxed because the feeling of his hands on her shoulders was steadying, even though his grip on her was slightly uncomfortable. It was as if he thought she might still go hurtling toward the ground if he let go of her. By holding onto her he could at least be certain of where she was at any given moment.

Taking solace in the weight of his hands, she gave him a brief smile and then took a deep breath and answered his question.

"I know it was dangerous, so there's no point in being angry with me," she began, shaking her head. "Of course, you have a right to be angry, but I'm telling you right now that it won't do any good. It might have been reckless, but it was for a reason. I did take a chance, but sometimes chances are the only way for things to happen," she said with a smile as she tilted her head to the side. Then she closed her eyes briefly. "I really, really wanted to see you," she admitted with sweetly childish honesty, but when she opened her eyes again she was all princess, the Sofia who ruled and commanded, the Sofia who was beloved, the Sofia who was adored. "It was  _important_ that I see you. I have something to tell you, and this time I'd really like for you to listen until I finish talking," she said and then the spell of her royal word was broken, and she shyly looked down. Now she was the ordinary, common Sofia, the one who chatted with rabbits and was always underfoot. "And I want you to listen to me for another reason too. I owe you an apology," she said.

"An apology?" he asked, and the word was strange in his mouth, just as she was surely strange in her skin, standing there in her riding habit with a little bit of mud on her boots. He was not certain what to do with this Sofia who had come crashing through his bedroom window like a migratory bird blown totally off her course. He still had his hands on her shoulders, although he was not really cognizant of this fact.

"When I kissed you," here the flush rose to her cheeks as she folded her hands over her heart, "I was only thinking about what  _I_ wanted, not what  _you_ wanted. It was selfish. No matter how much I wanted to kiss you, I should have thought about how it would make you feel. I wanted it to be a special moment, filled with warmth and happiness, but instead all I did was make you upset." She ducked her head again, and her voice rang with quiet sincerity. "I am sorry, Mr. Cedric."

If Sofia had been looking at him, she would have seen the mixture of emotions that played out across his face after her apology. His hands had tightened on her shoulders again at the mention of the impossible 'k' word, but had gradually relaxed as she had continued, until at last he was left confounded. "Well," he began awkwardly, "I - That is to say, I don't think - I mean, I didn't - "

His confused and halting answer was interrupted by a great deal of noise from the workshop level. Someone was pounding on the door with dire intent. It sounded as if they might actually break the door in if left unanswered.

Cedric let go of Sofia as if he had just been caught groping her by royal authorities and went down the stairs to the workshop two at a time as much to avoid looking at the princess as to answer the urgent summons. Sofia went scrambling after him, still desperate to complete her confession, and hanging onto the thread of softness in his voice she had heard when he had begun to answer her apology.

As if to fully realize Cedric's greatest fears, the party intent on breaking in the door was a castle guard. The sorcerer prepared himself to be hauled away to the dungeon and clapped in irons for daring to entertain thoughts of kissing a royal highness, but on the off chance the guard had arrived for some other reason than to incarcerate him for his untoward thoughts, Cedric put off opening the door and instead asked, "What is it?"

"Princess Sofia's horse just came back to the stable riderless, and we're afraid something has happened to her. A sound like a collision was reported from this area of the castle. We're wondering if you saw or heard anything," came the urgent voice of Rudolpho.

"Oh yes, I've got her," Cedric said, then he hastened to correct himself, "What I mean to say is,  _she's in here_."

"And I'm perfectly fine," Sofia called out as she crowded up behind him, "My trick came off without a hitch. Sorry for worrying you all."

The relief on the other side of the door was audible. Now the castle guard did not have to mount a search for a possibly pancaked princess and then break the news to her royal father.

"But aren't you still deathly ill?" asked Rudolpho in confusion. "Isn't it dangerous for the princess to be in there with you?

It was horrifically dangerous, at least from the sorcerer's point of view, but the princess did not give him time to answer.

"Oh, it's all right," Sofia answered cheerily, "I've had all my vaccinations."

And that quite effectively got rid of the guard problem.

As the guard retreated, Sofia flopped against the door in relief, letting out a familiar sigh and giving Cedric a very genuine smile, which he found altogether charming as well as unspeakably terrifying. Everything about her practically sang out, _That's another scrape we've got through_. Here was another strange, beautiful moment he had shared with the predictably unpredictable Sofia. He skittered away from her nervously. It was if he found himself perpetually on the edge of a yawning abyss, scrabbling to maintain his footing, as the dark unknown constantly consumed what little ground he had left.

Sofia saw him retreat and she pressed her teeth against her lower lip.

Now was the time, before things slipped away again.

"Mr. Cedric - " she began, moving toward the work table, where he had withdrawn.

But her advance excited the other party in the room, and he began cawing raucously, so Sofia had difficulty thinking.

"That's as far as you come, your highness," came the indignant croaking of Wormwood. "The royal sorcerer is uninterested in speaking with you further today.  _Leave_."

"Wormwood," Sofia pleaded, "Please be still for a while. I'm willing to hear you out about this, but first I really need to talk to Mr. Cedric - "

"I have no desire to talk  _anything_ out with you, princess," the raven stormed loudly, "There is nothing up for discussion - "

"I understand that you've got strong feelings about all this - "

" - made for better things than this - "

"But I've got strong feelings too, and I really need to talk to him about them - "

" - have had your uses in the past, and therefore you've been tolerated, however - "

"I'm trying to be as nice about this as I possibly can, but if you won't be quiet enough for me to talk to him, then - "

" - and we've got absolutely no interest in a royal patron who doesn't know the meaning of personal space and who cannot keep her hands to herself - "

Without further warning, Sofia laid her hand on the wand that lay on the work table and pointed it directly at the raven.

" _Tacitata_!" she cried out with all the passion of a little valkyrie, and a flare of magic blew out of the wand rendering the offending bird very silent.

He was still attempting to make quite a bit of noise, but even his feathers had been silenced.

Sofia winced slightly.

"I am sorry," she apologized to the raven, bowing her head slightly. "I hate to do that to you. I promise I'll unmute you just as soon as I finish talking to Mr. Cedric, so please, just be patient."

Sofia was skilled enough at beak-reading to realize that Wormwood had not accepted her apology gracefully, but she resolved to make it up to him later. She had more important things to do.

She turned her attention back to the sorcerer to find that he was staring at her slack jawed again, his eyes glued to the wand in her hand, as if he feared what spell might come out of it next, particularly if he continued to give her unfavorable answers. She laughed nervously and then gingerly put the wand back on the work table.

"Sorry about using it without asking," she apologized and he silently shook his head as he remembered to close his mouth.

Sofia sighed again and gave him a weak smile.

"Sorry," she said, "I really seem to be doing everything backwards. I came here to apologize to you, and I keep doing things that I have to apologize for. I promise that I'm not trying to be difficult," she said honestly, "I guess that's just how I am."

" _You are,_ " Cedric answered at once, and with absolute certainty.

This answer after all his earlier hesitation caused Sofia to forget her anxiety and laugh companionably.

"You're honest," she said, tilting her head slightly to the side again. "Now it's my turn to be honest. I'm sorry if I'm not very good at saying this. I wish I could really say all the things that are in my heart, but I know I don't really have the words, so I hope you can be satisfied by what I do have." She breathed in deeply, and then began to speak, "Once upon a time," she said, "There was a little girl who lived in a little village and sold shoes at a shoe shop with her mother. That was me. One day, my mom up and married the king, and my whole life got turned absolutely upside down. I became a princess, and even more crazily important than that, I got a new brother and a sister, and a new dad, and I had to start at a brand new school where I didn't really know the first thing about anything. It was awful and there were times when I was really lonely. It's funny to think of now," she said with a quiet laugh, "But I used to dream of going back to our little house, to our little shoe shop, like that could undo everything that had happened." Then she shook her head briefly as if clearing away nostalgia, "Little by little, I stopped having that dream, because I started to discover that even though things were different, that didn't mean they were bad. And I learned that things are always changing, that you can't hold on to 'now' forever, because it gets away from you, that you have to love all the days as they come. Being a princess hasn't always been easy," she said, "In fact, sometimes it's been really, really hard. I've come here so many times over the years, because I needed this thing, or that thing, because I was afraid, or discouraged. You didn't always give me easy answers," she said with a wry smile, "But you helped me grow and grow and grow and grow," she said, raising her arms above her head and spreading them. "I got to be the Sofia I am today because of all the help you've given me up until now, and more than anything, I want to thank you for that."

She dropped into a picturesquely beautiful curtsey.

Cedric looked at her steadily for several moments, and he seemed to waver, raising a hand briefly as if he meant to speak, but then he turned his back on her, folding his arms across his chest. When he spoke he sounded tired and remote.

"You shouldn't thank me," he said flatly. "Half the time I wasn't trying to help you at all, it just turned out that way. When I was trying to help you, I was usually just using you for my own ends. I was never trying to be your friend. I was generally trying to take over your father's kingdom."

Intense discomfort at his situation had made him brutally, cruelly, and perhaps stupidly honest. He could no longer see a way out of his situation. What he wanted most was to be rid of Sofia, whatever that cost him. He wanted to crawl into a dark hole and never see the sun again. He felt dry and pale, like a corpse in the desert, and he waited patiently for her tears, for her to sob pathetically - as he felt like doing at this exact moment - and run off crying.

But she did not do this.

Instead, she said, "Oh, I know."

This caused him to whirl on her in astonishment, his mouth again open like a venus fly trap.

" _You know?"_  he demanded with a mixture of furor and absolute confusion. "What do you mean  _you know?"_

She cocked her head to the side and raised an eyebrow, "Well," she said, shifting slightly on her feet, toeing at the stone in front of her winsomely. "You're not exactly all that subtle about it usually." She pushed her teeth against her lower lip again. "No offense."

The color drained from Cedric's face as he sat down limply at his desk.

"How long have you known?" he asked, ashen.

Sofia waved her hands rapidly, "Oh, not from the very beginning. I was really, really fooled for a while."

"You were?" Cedric asked, perking up as if she had shed a single ray of light upon him.

"I definitely was," Sofia nodded emphatically.

But his wavering self-confidence collapsed as quickly as it had been born.

Cedric let out a very pathetic, hopeless sounding sigh and waved his own hand at her weakly. "Well, if you knew all of this already, then why did you come? You can't tell me that you don't  _mind_ that I've tried to take over the kingdom a few dozen times - "

Sofia shrugged, then said honestly, "I really don't. You see, even though you've tried taking over the kingdom more than once, you've never actually  _succeeded_ at doing it. I'd have more of a problem with that," she explained.

Cedric buried his head in his hands, "So you only tolerate me because I'm such a  _terrible_  evil mastermind - " he lamented loudly.

"No, it's not that, I promise," Sofia insisted, hopping from foot to foot. "You see, over the years you sort of left off trying to take over the kingdom. I don't think you've tried in more than four years."

Cedric sniffled a little as he thought about it. "Well, not seriously," he admitted, sitting up again.

"You see?" Sofia said with a warm smile, "I don't like it so much when you're trying to take over my dad's kingdom. I think that's a dream that's too small for you," she assured.

"You think I should try and take over the world instead?" Cedric asked in confusion, and Sofia laughed again, sweet and even.

"I guess, in a way," she said. "I think you could be the best sorcerer that there ever has been, and make discoveries that no one's even imagined yet. I feel like you've closed yourself up inside a little box, and you don't know how to get out," she said helplessly. "Sometimes you come out, and really, those are the very best times," she said, and the warmth in her voice was enough to make him blush, so he looked studiously at the ground rather that meet her sparkling eyes. He briefly worried that she was about to burst into song, but she did not. Instead, she said, "One of the things I love about you is that you can be much bigger than you first seem. You cast a long shadow," she said winsomely.

A moment passed, and then another, and neither said anything, but then Sofia went completely pink.

"Oh," she said, "Oh, I guess I said it then. That wasn't really the way I meant to say it. I really meant to tell you all the different things I love about you, about how funny you can be, and about how I think you're really clever, and about how nice you are, especially when you don't have to be, and about how I love it when you smile, even when it's sort of sinister - " it was all tumbling out of her now, all out of order as she waggled her hands rapidly in distress, as if she were attempting to tread water with little success.

" _I can't,_ " Cedric cut into her confused outpouring and the pain and distress in his voice was such that it completely silenced her. "I can  _not_."

Sofia hesitated, her face still flushed, her breathing rapid, and then asked in a small voice, "Why?"

" _I will not take it_ ," Cedric reiterated sharply. "I will not take it, and I will not take you," he insisted, and she could see his hands tighten on the edge of the worktable. "I cannot," he repeated. "If I accepted what it is you offer, I would not be capable of giving it up. You're very young, and you are well-loved," he said helplessly. "I am sure what you feel right now, you believe you feel very strongly, but I am certain it will pass and you will find someone more - " he struggled. "Someone more appropriate. What you feel now, it will pass away, but if I have hold of you I will not let you go, regardless of your wishes. Let me be, princess, unless you wish to make me a much greater villain than I am now."

Having finished saying what he meant to say, Cedric turned his back on her again.

Sofia was hastily rubbing at the tears which had formed in the corners of her eyes and sniffling, but not because she had been rejected.

_She had not been rejected._

"Mr. Cedric," she said as she made to cross the space between them, "I still haven't said all I wanted to say - "

On his perch, Wormwood was still flapping and squawking silently, as if he anticipated what was to come.

But then something very singular happened.

Sofia put her foot down on the unfamiliar rug that was spread before the worktable and as she did she realized that something was very wrong. The rug folded up around her foot and her foot turned under her and skidded into a hole all the way up to her knee, causing her to stumble and fall. She grabbed at the work table as she fell, hoping to brace herself up, but all she managed to catch was the edge of the drop cloth, which she pulled down on top of her, along with everything else on it: assorted books, a silver scale, and one stoppered bottle.

Cedric had turned even as he heard her first noise of confusion and pain and nearly shrieked when he saw the worktable empty out on top of her. He was on his knees in a moment, dragging the drop cloth off of her, checking that the scales hadn't struck her on the head, and then sputtering and coughing, because the bottle that had become unstoppered had begun emitting a most unwholesome pink vapor.

"Princess Sofia," he managed between coughs, "Are you all right?"

"I think so," she answered, then tried to move the foot that was wedged into the hole and winced, "Well, mostly. I don't know about my ankle, and I think I might be stuck."

Cedric grabbed after the spilled bottle and turned it around so he could read the label and determine if it was possibly poisonous. It was  _Abscondit Corculilum._ Several days of sitting ignored on his worktable had turned the liquid solution into a gas. Sofia was coughing now too. Cedric had begun to feel slightly light-headed.

He reached up onto the worktable and managed to get his hand on his wand, which he brandished at the offending hole.

" _Reditto Pedis!_ " he shouted and out came Sofia's foot with a pop, although her boot remained entrapped. Then without further warning he had gathered her up in his arms and put her safely on his desk, out of the way of the pink fumes, which he dismissed with another spell. Then he paused briefly, tiredly rubbing at his forehead.

"And we still have no idea what that even does," he admitted, throwing a hand up.

And then he turned to look back at Sofia.

For a moment, he was very confused because his mind could not register what it is his eyes saw. Sofia seemed to be at the center of an intricate piece of art. All around her and radiating off of her were slender threads, curling like ironwork, and from these threads hung beautiful, vivid shards of color, like bits of stained glass or pieces of stone from a mosaic. They filled the room behind her, crowding up against the ceiling. In fact, they were beginning to bell around her, like the petals of a flower. As he looked from shard to brilliant shard in confusion, all at once he was assailed powerfully by a feeling of warmth, as if someone had grabbed tightly onto his hand and was ready to tug him off in some unknown direction. The feeling was familiar, but when he looked down at his hands, he found they were empty. Then he felt tickled, as if a thousand bubbles were crawling right up his spine and it felt so like Sofia's laughter that he almost  _heard_ an impudent giggle. And then there was a very peaceful feeling, like being swallowed up in comfort, and another like being touched by the sun for the first time. He felt adored.

It was not something that he might have put into words before, but now he had one that fit.  _He felt adored_.

Suddenly, Sofia was tugging on his sleeve excitedly, and she was speaking almost too rapidly to understand.

"Sense," she said, " _Sense_ , Mr. Cedric. That word didn't mean 'sense.' It was meant to be read as 'feelings.' That's the answer! 'Something hidden, something ever-present, but kept from view,'" she parroted perfectly. "Feelings, Mr. Cedric. They're something ever-present, but kept from view.  _Abscondit Corculilum_  is a potion to reveal hidden feelings!"

She was so elated at her discovery it was if she expected a gold star from him.

"P-Princess Sofia, can you - " he began with great trepidation.

" _YES_ ," she answered emphatically, and he turned to look over his shoulder like a man facing his own death.

There, like polished jewels hung on pale blue string hung his own feelings, as plain as anything. The ones near the ground were sooty, as if he had dragged them along behind him for a long time, unseen and unnoticed. The higher ones were more presentable and less generally depressing, but the hearts of each one of the shards gleamed brilliantly, even the sooty ones that looked trodden-upon.

He passed a hand in front of his face and tried to think of a way to explain himself.

He could think of nothing.

All at once, he realized that Sofia had begun speaking again.

"Mr. Cedric, I just noticed," she said as she looked around the room. "It's awfully cluttered in here, and I don't just mean us."

Cedric flushed, but still could think of nothing to say.

"All these books are from the castle library, aren't they?" she wondered aloud. She began reading the titles off to herself and made a realization, "It's all poetry, and fairy tales, and romantic novels," she said in amazement. "There must be a hundred of them. They're piled up everywhere."

"I was looking," he began haltingly, "I was looking for a story about a princess who ended up with a sorcerer," he finished and felt very dull and stupid. "And I couldn't find even one."

"Maybe that's because it's our story," Sofia suggested gently, "And it hasn't been written yet because we haven't written it."

"Princess - " Cedric protested weakly still keeping his eyes on the ground, "I told you - "

"And I told you that I hadn't finished saying what I wanted to say," she reminded him, then took another deep breath. It was time to gather up all the threads of her courage. "I know you said that you can't take what I have to give you, because you say you won't be willing to give it back. Well that's all right," she said with an exasperated laugh, "I don't want you to give it back. I want you to keep it for always. Otherwise I wouldn't have offered it in the first place," she said very sensibly.

"You don't understand what you're saying," Cedric answered her crossly, and so Sofia planted her hands on her hips.

"I do so!" she insisted, the color rising in her cheeks. "I don't want anybody else but you! I'm willing to wait until you're ready. I can be really patient, I promise. But it's you. It's always been you. I'll wait patiently until you ask me, but I'm telling you right now, when you ask me, my answer is going to be 'yes.' That's because it's always been 'yes' and it's always going to be 'yes.' It'll probably be a different 'yes' tomorrow than it is today, but it'll still be a 'yes.' If you ask me every day, from now until I die, it'll be 'yes.' If you want, you can keep asking me until you're satisfied."

Cedric's brows drew together.

"Are you saying you'll, I mean, that you want to,  _with me?_ " he asked, turning very pink himself, despite his bewilderment. "You can't," he denied vehemently, but then he seemed to be considering. "Can you?" he wondered, as if she were truly mystifying, like gravity. "Are you sure?" he asked, as if he still could not wrap his mind around the idea.

" _YES_ ," she answered again, very strongly, but then she laughed, her tension broken, "Although you'd better ask again at some point. I mean, more plainly. You know what I'm going to say, but it's the thought that counts." She gave him an impish wink. "You can do it in your own way, in your own time. Until then, I'm going to act like you've already asked," she warned with a smile, "Because  _I've already answered_."

"Princess Sofia," Cedric protested again, and felt very warm.

"Well?" she asked with a laugh, "Do you accept? My offer, I mean."

"I," Cedric said, and then swallowed hard. "I think I have to," he said. "I don't really see that I have any other choice. Princess," he said, eying her with great scrutiny, "You drive a very hard bargain."

"I am very good at negotiation," Sofia admitted, then winced as Cedric inadvertently brushed up against her ankle.

"Ugh," Cedric said as he caught sight of it. "That is grotesquely swollen. Sit still. I'll have it down in no time, although you won't be able to walk on it for a while."

"I suppose I'll just have to sit here then," Sofia said innocently, "Unless you feel like carrying me around some more."

He looked up at her, ready with a dry remark, but found she was silently giggling into her hands and so he only rolled his eyes as he went about gathering the things he needed to bind her ankle. As he worked, the magnificent spectacle wrought by the potion slowly dissipated, leaving nothing but the memory of the scene behind. Their feelings remained, however, now somewhat  _less hidden,_ at least from one another. He hoped, at least for his own health, that they remained hidden from the public at large, at least for the time being. He was not yet ready for that conversation with the king.

Meanwhile, Sofia studied the hole that still held her boot somewhere near its bottom.

"Is that hole - " she began.

"Yes, it's from the other day," he answered shortly. "That stuff might have eaten all the way to the floor below if you hadn't neutralized it when you did. Thank you, Princess," he said, glancing up at her briefly as he knelt to bandage her foot.

"But why didn't you just fix it with a spell?" she asked in confusion. "Why cover it up with a rug? That was dangerous!" she lectured.

"I didn't want to look at it," Cedric answered with a frown that was close to a pout. "I didn't want to  _think_ about it."

"So you just covered it up?" Sofia asked, disbelieving.

"Yes, Princess Sofia," he said, his cheeks coloring darkly, "That is what I did."

At this she burst out laughing. She laughed so hard that her foot bounced up and down, making it difficult to bind her ankle.

"Yes," he said crossly, "Please do have a good laugh at my expense."

"Oh Mr. Cedric," she managed as her giggles subsided, and she hugged herself tightly, "I'm sorry, it's just, well,  _that's so like you_."

He flushed and looked away, feeling ridiculous.

"And all that time you kept telling me that you had whooping cough, you were sneaking down to the library to bring back book after book after book," she said. "If I'd known, I'd have just waited for you there."

"Princess Sofia - " he began in consternation, having at last finished binding her foot.

"Mr. Cedric, I love you," she said very honestly and openly, her cheeks rosy and her fingers laced together over her heart.

He let out a sigh and his anger evaporated.

"Listen," he said as he leaned on the desk next to her, "You can't keep calling me that."

"Why?" Sofia asked, a small smile curling up on her mouth. "I call you that because I respect you."

"I know," he said between clenched teeth, because that was obvious, but beside the point. "And I appreciate that. But you can't keep doing it. Our circumstances have changed."

"Really?" Sofia asked innocently, and looked very doe-eyed.

Cedric rolled his eyes again.

"Yes, really," he said. "I can't have you calling me that if you're going to be my w-" he stuttered, failed utterly, then tried again, "My wi-" It was as if he had an allergic reaction to the very word. At the moment, it was still too potent for him to say. He was beginning to feel completely exhausted. "You just can't keep doing it, is that clear?" he asked, feeling a little drained.

"If that's the way you want it," Sofia said, and her pleasure was palpable. "What should I call you instead?" she wanted to know.

"Cedric," was all he said.

And then he kissed her.

This kiss lasted considerably longer than twelve seconds and reacquainted them both with the heady rush of euphoria that had resulted from their first tentative brush with one another. It was strong and sweet and as much a mess as their feelings, but it was earnest. It tickled and it  _agitated_. It made him lean in intently as she put her arms around his neck, and it made her curl her toes as he leaned forward. By the end of it, Cedric was even more certain of what he had admitted to her earlier.

He had not had a choice in the matter.

But neither had he any complaints.

On his perch and still silenced, Wormwood had  _many_ complaints, but these would remain unvoiced, until a later date.


End file.
